Over on the other blog, I try to post one Bad Culinary Idea per week. You know what's a bad idea? Homemade ceviche. Food poisoning usually garners some sympathy, until you tell everyone you ate raw fish that hadn't been flash frozen. "Isn't that how your husband got dysentery?" people say.

I'm proofreading all our plant lists for this year- eventually, I started listing all the foods found in common names. (Bored.) I was scanning one list when my brain alerted me that a specific entry contained a new food item. I stared at "narrow leaved owl's clover" for almost a minute, trying to decide if I had been thinking of owls as a tasty snack, clover as something other people ate, if leaves actually counted as a food name, or if I had read "narrow" as "marrow". Eventually, my brain explained that the new food was "eggs"- that the alternative common name for this plant is butter n' eggs.

I've been reading scifi about the theory of consciousness- and let me tell you, my Parliament is a sight smarter than the queen.

C has an e-mail devoted to junk. That is, when he buys something and they request a valid e-mail for a.) shipping problems and b.) spam, he has a special e-mail for that. One of the benefits of being his spouse is that I can use it too.

Unless I want to buy him gifts.

NOOOOO!

Mingleminglemingle

I believe that everyone should have a fantasy career. It doesn't have to pay well, it may not be half as emotionally fulfilling as one's real career, it may be truly soul sapping and unpleasant. But everyone has three or four things that they really dislike about their job- it's healthy to fantasize about a world where these peeves are absent.

For instance, I hate poison oak, sleet down my neck, lots of driving, and unreliable implacable scheduling. When I am cursing my fate, I say "I should have been a dental hygenist." I would never have to skip Pilates matwork because my knees are solid bruises. I could go to farmer's markets on my lunch break. I could scrape gunk off of peoples teeth, natter on about plants, and they wouldn't be able to talk back. Or escape.

C daydreams about the carefree life of property management. My coworker imagines her life as a flight attendent- pouring endless ginger ales in a clean blouse and pantyhose, every single day. We dream small, beset with the irritations of our everyday lives.

Last week, I got an e-vite to a career related meet-and-greet/social. I've gone to these in the past. Botanists are new to career building- remembering someone's name and having a business card is considered impressive go-getter evidence. Thus, everyone there is thinking the word "mingle" over and over again, hoping that networking conversations will magically happen. It's dreary. I really should go and practice my groupthink skills.

The Google ad for this e-mail is "Become a Dental Hygienist. Dental Hygiene programs near "

Well played, Google. Well played.

All my friends in high school were wrong.

This is the Red Army and the Leningrad Cowboys singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Which means that the Leningrad Cowboys actually exist. They are not a delusion of my adolescence.

And apparently The Leningrad Cowboys Go America is one of the top 100 world films of all time. It is superlatively weird... I mean, they have a dude chasing them for the entire movie, carrying a fish. The band manager keeps an endless supply of beer in the ice-filled coffin on the roof of the car.

The mystery of how said film made it to the local Video Village remains.

Sea Change

People ask if being married is different. It is! I swear! There are lots of ways, most of them depressing. For instance, more people treat you like your romantic attachments have value!

But at the moment, I'm more interested in my transition from non-toucher to toucher.

I think it was the wedding that desensitized me. The wedding photographs show me hugging an unending succession of people- including a woman who wandered in, took a plate of food, and left. Hugs! And there were Chileans- months after my last visit to Chile, people would hold out a hand and I'd reflexively kiss their cheeks. Now, I just assume I'm supposed to dole out a little arm pat, a comforting hand squeeze. It's like writing thank you notes: significantly easier after the first hundred.

I didn't realize that I'd become a... toucher until last night. We were at a party typical of my hometown- first there was a potluck and lawn games, then there was a drum circle, a bonfire, and a small ceremony honoring everyone who had died this year. You know, Samhain. I gave a reflexive shoulder squeeze to a sobbing neighbor, and realized that I had crossed over to the physical affection side.

Hello, people back on the sane, WASPy side of the divide! I salute you! Please do not sue me for sexual harassment!

I should have seen this coming. This summer, my supervisor and I were standing in a jungle, trying to decipher 35 year old notes on plants about the size of a throw cushion. I had just handed off the map so that I could decamate the mosquito population- and one of them landed on his cheek. So yes, I reflexively slapped my boss- and he has not yet done anything to deserve it.

But Y'all Should Vote.

Y'all have probably not read an entire cookbook by Alice Waters, doyenne of California Cuisine. I have, because I have issues. When you read her cookbooks, it seems really easy to cook the best, healthiest food all of the time- as long as you structure your entire life around living like Alice Waters. Two farmer's markets a week, spending 1/4th your income on food, learning to haraunge the butcher and the baker- I do some of these things, and my mother and law does more- but Ms. Waters presents it as the simplest possible thing, because that is what her life is.

So- there's a giant freaking election Tuesday, with light and justice directly opposed to evil and also evil. I have just discovered that once again, C will manage not to vote. It is not hard, and if you don't care about local issues, there's no reason your absentee ballot can't follow you from city to city forever. It's just- civil duty is not something he builds his life around. Feh.